Damned
by koipond-tea
Summary: Death is a lonely journey. Truth is, Lydia never thought that the afterlife (although she didn't believe in one before) would be like this. Wandering unseen as she watches her family move on from her and her parent's death. She presumes she's being punished, for what? She doesn't know, all she knows is that things are changing in her home town and she isn't one to miss a party.


_**Dead At Nineteen. **_

_**.**_

_The thing about life is that it ends. You're born, you live, you die; but that doesn't mean that the journey is over. Pieces of yourself, your true self, continue on down the river of existence, gathering the wisdom of experience that each set of circumstances afford. _

_The problem with this is truth is, very few actually believe it, and the world now is such that faith is an increasingly difficult thing to hold onto. _

_ - Unknown _

Death is a lonely journey. Truth is, Lydia never thought that the afterlife (although she didn't believe in one before) would be like this. Wandering unseen as she watches her family – what's left of her family move on from her and her parent's death. She supposes she's being punished, for what? She doesn't know, all she knows is that wherever she is, her parents aren't. And she hopes that they're in a better place than she is.

"What are you doing here?" An old voice croons softly behind her.

Lydia turns and faces Sheila Bennett. Her younger sisters best friend's grandmother, and just about the only other person she knows on the other side. The corner of Lydia's lips quirk up slightly.

"I can't say happy birthday to my little sister?" When Sheila doesn't respond she takes it as disapproval but continues anyway. "Cut me some slack, Grams. Elena's heartbroken because her do-gooder of a boyfriend is keeping her safe from that psychopathic werewolf/vampire guy, our parents are dead, I'm dead and Jeremy just about died; only he was lucky enough to come back alive. I should be there to comfort her."

Sheila sighs and gives her a stern look, one that admittedly used to terrify her, key words: used to. "This is your old life. How can you move on when you linger in their shadows?"

"What? Like you linger in Bonnie's?" Lydia raises an eyebrow and Sheila presses her lips together and narrows her eyes.

"Come along, child. We have other things to do than watch the living live." Her words were so hypocritical when half the time Lydia looked for her she was with Bonnie.

Regardless, she follows Sheila touching Elena's shoulder briefly before they're swept away somewhere else.

"Hey, you okay?" Damon enters as Elena touches her shoulder looking down at it in confusion.

"Yeah, I just thought – never mind. You don't have to worry; I'm not going to lose it. At least not before the cake." Elena shakes her head getting rid of memories from before the accident.

* * *

><p>Time on the other side isn't a concept Lydia understood at first. The days felt long and endless but at the same time they had the exact amount of hours as the living. Perhaps she only felt that way because she was dead.<p>

When she had arrived drenched in water sobbing like a newborn baby no one had paid her any mind. Then again who would want to look over a blubbering mess of a teenage girl (she was almost twenty mind you). She never thought dying and being a ghost or whatever she is would make her actually mature to be the girl her parents so forcefully wanted her to be when she was alive.

She knew no one on the other side. There wasn't any bright light that was going to sweep her away and take her to her parents and grandparents. No, there was just a cold dark feeling inside her and no such thing as a bright white light.

Everybody else was too focused on themselves and finding something called an Anchor to take them where they were supposed to be. The months felt like years as she watched her sister visit her grave and her brother turn to the worst possible solution of forgetting; drugs and alcohol.

Lydia didn't attend her funeral, she thought that it would've been a bit vain if she went and ended up crying. She was dead; there was nothing she could do about it. Funerals were for the living, not for the dead.

She admits to loosing hope. Her little brother was going in a downward spiral and Elena – Elena was Elena, trying to fool everybody into believing she was okay only for it to backfire when she broke down in her room by herself. Lydia felt bad, honestly she did. In some strange way she felt as if it were her fault, well hers and her parents – they were dead too.

But she couldn't do anything but watch. Watch as her brother spiraled dangerously down a road he shouldn't be going and her sister wallow internally. Until everything changed with the arrival of the vampires. At first Lydia was against it, she had seen Stefan Salvatore around town before he had entered her little sisters life. The dead being unseen, were exceptional at stalking and finding out secrets. It didn't take her long to find out the Salvatore family secret. Yet, as much as she hated it, all it took to change her mind was one confession from Stefan.

He was there.

He was there the night she and her parents died. He had saved Elena's life and although Lydia could tell Elena was angry at him, angry she saved her but not her family she knew she was grateful. Grateful, because if they had all died Elena included Jeremy would've lost everything. And Lydia didn't think it would take very long before he followed.

The first person to appear on the other side with her was Vicki. Lydia hated her when she was alive, even more when she was dead. Thankfully, though for her only, that the second person to join her was Sheila. Someone that was more than tolerable and someone she could finally ask questions about the damned place. Because by that time Lydia had found out that the other side was for supernatural beings only. And the last time she checked, she wasn't supernatural.

That was when Sheila broke the news to her: she was adopted.

Well, that part she knew.

Unlike Elena her parents didn't keep her adoption a secret. But according to Sheila, her mother in all her abandoning glory; was a witch. From New Orleans no less, the mecca for witchcraft and voodoo. Lydia didn't understand at first, her life as mundane as it used to be, was a lie. Well not all of it of course, not her parents despite their biological differences or her siblings and certainly not her love for them.

Still, the witch revelation was really quite interesting. And to spice up her undead life as a ghost or spirit or whatever she was, Lydia thought that a little practice couldn't hurt. So, practice she did. Most of what she learned was by watching Bonnie practice, sometimes doing the spells with her. Never when Sheila was around her though, apparently there were rules on the other side and practicing witches was one of them.

But, Lydia was always a bit of a rule breaker.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Vicki turns around with a gasp and Lydia puts on her best imitation of Sheila's no-nonsense look.

"Nothing."

Lydia raises and eyebrow not believing her for a second as Jeremy continues to reassure Bonnie over the phone that the flickering lights were an electrical problem and not one being caused by the girl standing in front of her.

"Fine." Vicki snaps frustrated at being caught. She hates Lydia just as much she hates her. "I just miss being around them, being alive."

Lydia takes an intimidating step forward. "If you miss them so much why don't you stalk your own brother and _not_ mine."

Vicki's lip curls but she leaves anyway.

Lydia walks closer to her little brother and smiles, he's grown and matured so much that sometimes she can't even believe it though it's staring her right in the face. Jeremy says goodbye to Bonnie, his girlfriend, (when on earth did he start having girlfriends? She can't even remember) and hangs up though as he tries to leave he catches sight of Lydia standing behind him in the reflection of a particularly shiny pan.

"_Lydia?" _His voice quivers and his eyes widen.

"Jeremy." Hers is soft and whisper-like. She reaches out to him, just when she's about to touch him she's whisked away, sent somewhere else like she's nothing but wind.

_I miss you._

She wanted say.

* * *

><p>Lydia's meditating when Sheila confronts her.<p>

"You should leave your family alone. Move on from this life, you have no unfinished business here, your afterlife will be much more peaceful than watching your family move on."

"Says you." Lydia peaks one eye open before opening them both and slouching. Continuing to meditate would be useless, Sheila disrupted her peace. "And unfinished business? I'm nineteen years old! I haven't even lived, that's pretty much one of the biggest unfinished business there is."

"What about tormenting Jeremy like that, Lydia. Now he's wondering if he's crazy since you showed up." Sheila gives her infamous no-nonsense look.

"I was just trying to keep that slut Vicki away from him." Lydia explains picking her nails as she looks around. The abandoned house she was meditating in was ghastly but it was also the place where a hundred witches were killed and their magic soaked into the earth below. "I think she's up to something, Grams. She is way too desperate to get in touch with Jeremy and I don't think it's to get him to tell her brother that she loves him."

"What are you even doing here anyway?" Sheila writes off her suspicions as nothing because she knows the grudge she holds for Vicki.

"Practicing." A sly smile carves its way onto Lydia's face and she drops the subject of Vicki and her suspicions.

Sheila sighs and gives her a tired look along with the sentence she's repeated far too many times. "Witches can't practice magic here, Lydia. We're only here for the living to channel us."

"But I'm getting really good, Grams." Lydia insists as she tells the older woman to watch.

With a lot of focus and a little bit of chanting the candles around the room light up slowly one by one. A grin spreads across her face because although to the living it may seem so kindergarten like to her it was hard work. Magic on the other side was hard but not impossible, Lydia only wonders what it's like to practice if she were alive.

Sheila's horrified look makes her grin wane and a worried look take over. In an instant Sheila grabs her arm and they're swept away only to reappear somewhere deep in the woods far away from the house.

"I can't believe this!" Sheila whispers eyes darting everywhere. "When I said we can't practice magic here, I mean we really _can't_. Our powers are nothing here."

"I don't understand."

Lydia shakes her head slowly not knowing where she was going.

"We get our magic from the earth, Lydia and when we die the earth takes it back. We have no powers on this side."

"Then how can I do magic?" Lydia questions eyebrows furrowing.

"I don't know."

* * *

><p>Her sister is stupid.<p>

So, so, so stupid (not that she didn't know that before).

Lydia couldn't for the death of her understand why she thought it was a good idea to go out searching for Stefan on a full moon with a pack of werewolves in the area. Honestly, probably one of her dumbest idea's so far. Although, trying to sacrifice herself kinda took the top spot.

"We got about a mile left." Alaric says to Damon and Elena and unknowingly Lydia.

"The sun's about to set."

"I can see that, Damon." Elena grits back and Lydia wants to slap her on the head and send her straight home. Only Elena's alive and she's dead, it just wasn't possible.

"Just saying." Damon responds as they make their way through the foliage.

"The moon doesn't reach its apex for a while. We have time."

Lydia was just about to give a verbal lashing (not that she could hear it) when some scruffy looking man stumbles out of the forest. She stands in front of Elena not that it would do much good but it makes her feel better knowing she's trying to protect Elena in some way.

"Stay where you are!" Alaric commands and points his crossbow at him.

"Vampire." The man mutters before rushing to Damon.

As they fight Lydia watches on mesmerized by their quick movements until the man has Damon up against a tree. Elena shouts his name tossing him a grenade which Damon catches and blows up in the man's face. He screams as his skin burns and melts off but his grip on Damon is relentless that's when Lydia decided to help.

She didn't like Damon nearly as much as she likes Stefan but Damon was the more entertaining of the two brothers and it would be a shame if he died.

Lydia concentrates holding her hand out, she didn't know if she was allowed to do it or she didn't know if she _could. _Her experience with magic wasn't much especially since she apparently wasn't supposed to be able to do magic on the other side. But, then again, she always was a rule breaker. The snap and popping sounds of the man's knees dislocating and breaking was almost music to her ears. Because she did it, she actually did it.

Her, Lydia Gilbert, a nineteen year old mundane dead scholar (yes, she is smart and freaking proud of it) could do magic.

But not just any kind of magic, she actually influenced something that is living (if you count vampires and hybrids as living) even though she herself is dead. It was a freaking miracle and also the start of a plan. Because she did have unfinished business, a lot of unfinished business to be exact.

Dead at nineteen, that's not going to be her end.

Not if she has a say in it.

* * *

><p><em>AN: HAPPY NEW YEAR! decided to kick 2015 off with a new story ;D don't worry I haven't abandoned my others. Please, Review :) _


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